


dare me to leave you

by cosimamanning



Series: punky monkey vol 1-365 [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Don't Read This if You're Looking for Happy Cophine, F/F, I Had Some Real Problems With Specific Dialogue in 5x05 But It's Fine I'm Fine Everything's Fine, Past Domestic Violence, Power Imbalance, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosimamanning/pseuds/cosimamanning
Summary: “This is what we do. I push too hard and you do things without my consent. That’s our relationship.”“We can end it, or we can just accept it as it is.”





	dare me to leave you

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so i was really bothered by the exchange between cosima and delphine and decided to fix it so here you go

_ “This is what we do. I push too hard and you do things without my consent. That’s our relationship.” _

_ “We can end it, or we can just accept it as it is.” _

Cosima hates being left. 

Hates being alone, hates the feeling of emptiness as it settles onto her chest, pressing down on her, further and further. 

Cosima knows loneliness, knows it intimately, knows it because it is something she crafted for herself, once, in an attempt to keep herself safe. Keep herself sheltered. Knows loneliness because on the nights where she was young and unsure of herself it had been the loneliness that kept her comfort, humming lullabies in her veins as Cosima tried to wish herself to happiness. 

Sally and Gene Niehaus are professors, they raise Cosima to always ask questions, always seek answers. To never accept anything at face value. 

“If people just accepted things as they were,” Gene tells her, when she’s six and studying a simplified version of Darwin's evolutionary theory, “we wouldn’t have science. We’d still be sitting, mindless, in a cave somewhere.”

Cosima smiles at him from above her book, because maybe if she knows enough about finches she can convince her parents to stay home with her, or let her tag along with them to their classes, for once. 

Cosima remembers being six, being ten, thirteen, fifteen, eighteen. 

She remembers people leaving, coming and going. Friends, girlfriends, first, fleeting loves, even her own, adoring parents. They’re professors, always searching for knowledge, always pursuing the next joy in their life, and when Cosima packs her bags for college, thinking that she’s the one doing the leaving, for once, all her heart does is ache when her parents wave, and she can’t help but feel like she’s the one being left. 

Cosima hates being left. 

Delphine leaves. 

Again and again and again. 

Sometimes she has a reason, and sometimes she can’t control it, but the point is she  _ leaves _ , and Cosima is alone to pick up the pieces of herself. Except she isn’t. 

Sarah’s there, Sarah opens her door―Felix’s door―and opens her arms and lets Cosima sink into her for comfort, lets Cosima bury herself in her and never says  _ I told you so _ , because if anyone understands being left, it’s Sarah, Sarah who spends most of her time  _ leaving  _ to avoid being abandoned. 

Cosima thinks about how Delphine entered her life, bright and shining and new―Cosima is a scientist, it is in her nature to want to study new phenomena, to observe them, and this time she let herself get lured into a trap that had honey blonde hair and a kind smile that hid razor sharp teeth that were always ready to rip and take and consume. 

Cosima thinks about how Delphine leaves―and she does it often. 

Somehow, it always seems to be Cosima’s fault, because Delphine is leaving  _ for her _ , she says, because Delphine is always making decisions without asking for Cosima’s input. Cosima tells her, once, that she needs to love all of them, but there is a part of her, inside, the part touched by loneliness, the part that aches from abandonment, that screams,  _ love me most! _

Cosima hates being left, but she hates being lonely more, so when Delphine comes back, Cosima latches onto her like a lifeline, because Delphine is what Cosima knows, and in all this chaos, Cosima thinks she needs something familiar. 

Sarah opens her door for her when Cosima needs her to, though, always. 

Their bodies fit together like a puzzle and Sarah pulls Cosima close to her chest, seems to understand that on the nights where Cosima’s lungs ache and the rest of her body is sore with a different kind of melancholy that she needs to be held, needs firm pressure grounding her, tethering her to something. Needs to be reminded that something is real, that she is still alive, still breathing, even if each breath comes more difficult than the last. 

Sarah tells Cosima about Vic some nights, when her hands trace idle patterns on Cosima’s skin, unusually gentle for someone usually so rough. She’s always like this with Cosima, though, soft, gentle, though never out of pity. Brown eyes that mirror Cosima’s own stare back at her with some sort of understanding, and Sarah never tells her  _ I told you so _ . 

She calls her bitch sometimes, gets frustrated with her, and she and Cosima fight like the best of them, but Sarah understands, and they always make amends. 

Sarah tells Cosima about Vic. 

About how their relationship started as a working one, how Vic was impressed with Sarah’s quick fingers and ability to disappear. Sarah hit her marks with stunning accuracy and Vic reaped the benefits, and he smiled at her kindly, showering her with a kind of favoritism she had never been offered before. 

“He had a way of making me feel important,” Sarah tells her, and Cosima listens, attentively, because she doesn’t think she has ever heard Sarah explain, has only heard mentions of Vic in passing, of  _ Vic the dick _ . Beth had mentioned, once, that she had gone through facial recognition scans to find them. 

Cosima wonders what she saw when she saw Sarah. 

Sarah tells her about the early romance, how it felt, for a while, like flying, high on drugs and life and the freedom of running away. Vic called it love, broad-shouldered and beaming in his victory, because he had a prize of his own. 

Sarah was not good at being owned. 

Sarah tells Cosima about Vic. 

Cosima traces her hands over the skin Sarah tells her Vic hit, kicked, traces over the jagged scar on Sarah’s hipbone where he had shattered a vase, once. 

“It took me so long to leave,” Sarah tells her, “because through all of it, he still had me convinced that he loved me.” Vic was a con artist, it was in his nature to manipulate, to steal, to take things from people. He’d taken Sarah’s trust and squashed it beneath his foot, fooled her into staying. 

“You can always leave,” Sarah says, convincing herself more than Cosima, because Cosima is terrified of being left and Sarah spends most of her life abandoning in fear of being abandoned, “there’s always a way.”

Love was not meant to ache so much. 

Love was meant to soothe, to calm, to nurture. Sarah remembers Vic and she lets herself cry, for a little while, at the memory of it, and Cosima holds her, they hold each other, tethers to a world that is too big and too chaotic and too filled with fear. 

Wrapped in Sarah’s arms, Cosima feels warm, and safe, and content, and for once, she doesn’t fear being left, even though Sarah’s feet are so used to running, because she can feel it thrumming, deep in her bones, as familiar as the loneliness, that they’re  _ connected _ . That something about this was meant to be. 

Sarah fights her way to Cosima on an island, tooth and nail, half-dead and bleeding out, desperate to take Cosima home. Her eyes scream with the need for it, to bring the two of them back to safety, together. 

“I need to be here,” Cosima tells her, and Sarah accepts it. Sarah does not insist Cosima change her mind, Sarah does not yell or argue or go against Cosima’s wishes. Sarah accepts, a heaviness in her chest and a sadness in her eyes, but she accepts because it’s Cosima, and Sarah leaves, hobbles out the door, and Cosima stays. 

It doesn’t feel like she’s being left, not when it’s Sarah, not when she knows Sarah would be back in the blink of an eye if she calls for her. 

“This is what we do. I push too hard and you do things without my consent. That’s our relationship.”

“We can end it, or we can just accept it as it is.”

Delphine stares at her, defiant, and Cosima knows that this is another one of Delphine’s power trips. She remembers the way Shay’s voice had shaken, after Delphine had come to visit. She remembers herself, the feeling of betrayal fresh and stinging after every time Delphine made a decision about her body without her knowledge, without her consent, in the name of her best interest. 

Cosima knows that Delphine expects her to accept it, as she always has. To keep moving forward as though nothing is wrong, to ignore all her hurts and just stay in this cycle, of betrayal and secrets and of being left. 

_ “If people just accepted things as they were,” Gene tells her, when she’s six and studying a simplified version of Darwin's evolutionary theory, “we wouldn’t have science. We’d still be sitting, mindless, in a cave somewhere.” _

It’s in Cosima’s nature to push boundaries, to question authority. Her father had instilled that in her from a young age, and staring at Delphine, she is about to change her nature for the girl who keeps leaving.

_ “You can always leave,” Sarah says, convincing herself more than Cosima, because Cosima is terrified of being left and Sarah spends most of her life abandoning in fear of being abandoned, “there’s always a way.” _

Cosima turns on her heel and walks out of the door. 

She doesn’t look back. 

**Author's Note:**

> when gene mentions "the cave somewhere" i was thinking very specifically about the allegory of the cave because i studied it in my theory of knowledge class and how you're always confined to your own cave of knowledge when there are things beyond that you don't know about, and being stuck in an unhealthy relationship is kind of like being stuck in this cave, and at the end, cos is walking out towards the sunlight and her happier endings and her truth and yeah i just liked that lil bit also the allegory of the cave was a bit of a mindfuck because when you think about it you can define "the cave" as anything, really
> 
> anyways. hope you enjoyed! comments and kudos are greatly appreciated and are the fuel for my soul to keep on going. 
> 
> as always, you can prompt me on my tumblr, [here](danaryas.tumblr.com) or check out some of my other stuff [here](archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/works)
> 
> s/o to ray and bri for helping inspire this and also making a mixtape and yelling with me during the episode because we were all heated as hell


End file.
